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A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)
9.0
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The game is afoot as Charlotte Holmes returns in the atmospheric second novel in New York Times...
The Anarchists Club
10.0
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'Leo Stanhope is a wonderful creation, his world atmospheric and terrifying, and his own story as...
Historical Fiction
ClareR (6241 KP) rated The Garden in Books
Oct 14, 2025
I knew The Garden was going to be set in a dystopian future, but I didn’t fully appreciate just how much I was going to like it.
The story starts off very gently: two elderly sisters, living in the grounds of a big house, one working tirelessly in the garden in order to provide them with enough food, the other joining in here and there, but mostly she’s preoccupied with practicing her dance routine. Outside the gardens walls lies unknown danger. One mustn’t even look beyond the wall.
And then a young boy arrives and everything changes. The outside comes inside.
I loved this. The rules the women live by, set by their mother decades ago, are there to keep them safe, but there’s no room for manoeuvre. So when they’re faced with the unexpected, they don’t know what to do. There’s a climate disaster angle too, and gives the reader a scenario of what might happen if we continue on our current trajectory. Changing seasons, drought, sandstorms.
This novel is so atmospheric. There’s an undercurrent of dread and impending doom, and the descriptions of the garden, cottage and land are quite beautiful.
Wonderful writing and a wonderful story. Highly recommended!
The story starts off very gently: two elderly sisters, living in the grounds of a big house, one working tirelessly in the garden in order to provide them with enough food, the other joining in here and there, but mostly she’s preoccupied with practicing her dance routine. Outside the gardens walls lies unknown danger. One mustn’t even look beyond the wall.
And then a young boy arrives and everything changes. The outside comes inside.
I loved this. The rules the women live by, set by their mother decades ago, are there to keep them safe, but there’s no room for manoeuvre. So when they’re faced with the unexpected, they don’t know what to do. There’s a climate disaster angle too, and gives the reader a scenario of what might happen if we continue on our current trajectory. Changing seasons, drought, sandstorms.
This novel is so atmospheric. There’s an undercurrent of dread and impending doom, and the descriptions of the garden, cottage and land are quite beautiful.
Wonderful writing and a wonderful story. Highly recommended!
ClareR (6241 KP) rated Spitting Gold in Books
Jun 4, 2026
I’ll be honest: I didn’t know what this was going to be about. It was a case of judging the book by its cover. I didn’t even read the synopsis before I got stuck in. I was very happy indeed when the first page took me in to a woman’s prison in Paris, France in 1866 - just for a little while, until we start to learn why exactly Sylvie is in this predicament.
Atmospheric writing places the reader in Paris after the French Revolution, where Baroness Sylvie is living a perfect life with her affluent lawyer husband.
Her estranged sister, Charlotte Mothe, visits with an offer that’s hard to refuse. Their father is very ill, Charlotte needs to pay the bills, and Sylvie must come out of retirement and conduct a seance to help her out. But Sylvie is risking her marriage.
Spitting Gold is a debut, and I thought it was gripping and entertaining - it kept me reading! The characters were fleshed out, believable and colourful (to say the least!). There were moments where it made me feel very uncomfortable - was it the ghosts?
There’s a bit of something for everyone here: historical fiction, mystery, the paranormal, sapphic romance and family dynamics.
Recommended!
Atmospheric writing places the reader in Paris after the French Revolution, where Baroness Sylvie is living a perfect life with her affluent lawyer husband.
Her estranged sister, Charlotte Mothe, visits with an offer that’s hard to refuse. Their father is very ill, Charlotte needs to pay the bills, and Sylvie must come out of retirement and conduct a seance to help her out. But Sylvie is risking her marriage.
Spitting Gold is a debut, and I thought it was gripping and entertaining - it kept me reading! The characters were fleshed out, believable and colourful (to say the least!). There were moments where it made me feel very uncomfortable - was it the ghosts?
There’s a bit of something for everyone here: historical fiction, mystery, the paranormal, sapphic romance and family dynamics.
Recommended!
The Low Road
8.0
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In 1828, two young women were torn apart as they were sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay....
Women's Fiction Historical Fiction LGBT+
The Green Baize Door (A Marie Chevalier Mystery, #1)
Book
An atmospheric historical mystery where every character has their own agenda, and their own truth. ...
Historical Mystery
ClareR (6241 KP) rated The Surf House in Books
Feb 22, 2026
The Surf House is an entertaining, fast moving, atmospheric thriller, and really doesn’t do many favours for the Moroccan tourist board. Bea is attacked in an alleyway after she decides to leave her modelling set in Marrakesh, and when a woman comes to her rescue, the unthinkable happens.
Bea is invited to The Surf House to hide out and gather her thoughts, and it seems idyllic. The descriptions of the sea, surfers and the beach almost made me want to learn how to surf somewhere hot (almost). But at the same time, it’s clear that there’s something else going on. Something rotten. When Bea finds out that a young woman went missing a year ago, she starts to notice more things that don’t seem right.
There are so many twists, turns and dead ends that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. I did find myself wanting to shout at her to just leave - I was so frustrated! She is pretty naive. But this is so well written and evocative of the setting and Bea’s feelings when she feels trapped and scared (and she feels those things a lot!), that I can forgive her naivety!
Ideal for those who enjoy a good thriller!
Bea is invited to The Surf House to hide out and gather her thoughts, and it seems idyllic. The descriptions of the sea, surfers and the beach almost made me want to learn how to surf somewhere hot (almost). But at the same time, it’s clear that there’s something else going on. Something rotten. When Bea finds out that a young woman went missing a year ago, she starts to notice more things that don’t seem right.
There are so many twists, turns and dead ends that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. I did find myself wanting to shout at her to just leave - I was so frustrated! She is pretty naive. But this is so well written and evocative of the setting and Bea’s feelings when she feels trapped and scared (and she feels those things a lot!), that I can forgive her naivety!
Ideal for those who enjoy a good thriller!
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Three... Extremes (2004) in Movies
Oct 28, 2021
Miike's segment is the best - just this viscerally atmospheric showcase in artsy horror from someone who clearly has an intimate knowledge of all the ins-and-outs of the genre (and features a mack daddy score from Koji Endo, who has a career full of them). Chan's is second place - just as brutally gross as everyone else has already mentioned. Wook's is my third favorite (I refuse to call it the worst, since they're all pretty awesome) - a good ole' fashioned exercise in mental torture with expectedly cool camerawork and a deeply weird tone that always keeps you on your toes. The kind of simple, nasty, and twisted histrionics you can always count on - if this were made today in the tired 'elevated horror' age it would either be 81 minutes or 3 hours long and be a monotonous, purposefully unsatisfying, rote, blatantly obvious metaphor for trauma or some similar bullshit. Meanwhile this is the type of film to show you a fetus getting chopped up in the first ten minutes then following it with Lee-Byung Hun being forced to dance in his underwear and a woman making out with her father in a Circus Big Top. Just plain sick and I loved it, speaks for itself.
ClareR (6241 KP) rated The Lamplighters in Books
Mar 14, 2022
The Lamplighters is a locked room (lighthouse!) mystery, which had me gripped up to the last page. How could three men go missing from a tower lighthouse, with no way off back to land. There’s no boat, no-one visited them - and what’s more, the lighthouse is locked from the inside when the investigation team arrive.
This is a mystery that affects their wives and partners even 20 years later. A writer contacts the three women and asks them to cooperate with him as he writes a book about the mystery. It seems that all three women held back secrets during the original investigation - but will the uncovering of these secrets make any difference?
The Lamplighters is told in flashbacks, alternating between the present day with the women, and the lead up to the disappearance with the men in the lighthouse. The lighthouse chapters in particular are seriously atmospheric, threatening, even. I had so many ideas as to what could have happened, my opinion changing constantly as more information was revealed. I didn’t guess the actual ending though, even after I’d described the basic storyline of the book to my husband, and he got it in one (note to self: do not discuss mystery books with the husband, AKA “Dr” Poirot…)
Highly recommended.
This is a mystery that affects their wives and partners even 20 years later. A writer contacts the three women and asks them to cooperate with him as he writes a book about the mystery. It seems that all three women held back secrets during the original investigation - but will the uncovering of these secrets make any difference?
The Lamplighters is told in flashbacks, alternating between the present day with the women, and the lead up to the disappearance with the men in the lighthouse. The lighthouse chapters in particular are seriously atmospheric, threatening, even. I had so many ideas as to what could have happened, my opinion changing constantly as more information was revealed. I didn’t guess the actual ending though, even after I’d described the basic storyline of the book to my husband, and he got it in one (note to self: do not discuss mystery books with the husband, AKA “Dr” Poirot…)
Highly recommended.